Cell therapy utilizes modified antigen presenting cells (APCs) or immune effector cells to initiate an immune response in a patient. Antigen presenting cells are central to cell therapy because they initiate the immune response. Indeed, they are the only cells capable of inducing a primary immune response from the T lymphocytes.
Dendritic cells (DC) are the most potent APCs involved in adaptive immunity. They coordinate the initiation of immune responses by naive T cells and B cells and induce antigen-specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses. DCs are specialized in several ways to prime helper and killer T cells in vivo. For example, immature DCs that reside in peripheral tissues are equipped to capture antigens and to produce immunogenic MHC-peptide complexes. In response to maturation-inducing stimuli such as inflammatory cytokines, immature DCs develop into potent T cell stimulators by upregulating adhesion and costimulatory molecules. At the same time, they migrate into secondary lymphoid organs to select and stimulate rare antigen-specific T cells. However, potent stimulation of T cells occurs only after DC maturation, a process that increases the availability of MHC/peptide complexes on the cell surface, in addition to co-stimulatory molecules, that direct the effector function of the responding T-cells. Indeed, immature DCs may be harmful in anti-tumor and other immunotherapies because they can induce immunotolerance rather than immunostimulation.
Co-stimulation is typically necessary for a T cell to produce sufficient cytokine levels that induce clonal expansion. One characteristic of dendritic cells which makes them potent antigen presenting cells is that they are rich in co-stimulatory molecules of the immune response, such as the molecules CD80 and CD86, which activate the molecule CD28, on T lymphocytes. In return, T-helper cells express CD40L, which ligates CD40 on DCs. These mutual interactions between DCs and T-cells leads to ‘maturation’ of the former, and the development of effector function in the latter. The expression of adhesion molecules, like the molecule CD54 or the molecule CD11a/CD18, facilitate the co-operation between the dendritic cells and the T-cells. Another special characteristic of dendritic cells is to deploy different functions depending on their stage of differentiation. Thus, the capture of the antigen and its transformation are the two principal functions of the immature dendritic cell, whereas its capacities to present the antigen in order to stimulate the T cells increases as the dendritic cells migrate into the tissues and the lymphatic ganglia. This change of functionality corresponds to a maturation of the dendritic cell. Thus, the passage of the immature dendritic cell to the mature dendritic cell represents a fundamental step in the initiation of the immune response. Traditionally, this maturation was followed by monitoring the change of the surface markers on the DCs during this process. Some of the more important cell surface markers characteristic of the different stages of maturation of the dendritic cells are summarized in Table I, below. However, the surface markers can vary depending upon the maturation process.
TABLE ICell typeSurface markersHematopoietic stemCD34+cellMonocytesCD14++, DR+, CD86+, CD16+/−, CD54+, CD40+Immature dendriticCD14+/−, CD16−, CD80+/−, CD83−, CD86+,cellCD1a+, CD54+, DQ+, DR++Mature dendriticCD14−, CD83++, CD86++, CD80++, DR+++,cellDQ++, CD40++, CD54++, CD1a+/−
Mature DCs are currently preferred to immature DCs for immunotherapy. Only fully mature DC progeny lack GM-CSF Receptor (GM-CSF-R) and remain stablely mature upon removal/in the absence of GM-CSF. Also, mature DCs have been shown to be superior in inducing T cell responses in vitro and in vivo. In contrast, immature DCs are reported to induce tolerance in vitro (Jonuleit et al. (2000) Exp. Med. 192:1213) as well as in vivo (Dhodapkar et al. (2001) Exp. Med. 193:233) by inducing regulatory T cells. Mature dendritic cells also are useful to take up and present antigen to T-lymphocytes in vitro or in vivo. The modified, antigen presenting DCs and/or T cells educated from these modified DCs have many applications, including diagnostic, therapy, vaccination, research, screening and gene delivery.
It is difficult to isolate mature dendritic cells from peripheral blood because less than 1% of the white blood cells belongs to this category. Mature DCs are also difficult to extract from tissues. This difficulty, in combination with the potential therapeutic benefit of DCs in cell therapy, has driven research and development toward new methods to generate mature dendritic cells using alternative sources. Several methods are reported to produce mature DCs from immature dendritic cells.
For example, Jonuleit et al. (Eur J Immunol (1997) 12:3135-3142) disclose maturation of immature human DCs by culture in medium containing a cytokine cocktail (IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6 and PGE2).
WO 95/28479 discloses a process for preparing dendritic cells by isolating peripheral blood cells and enriching for CD34+ blood precursor cells, followed by expansion with a combination of hematopoietic growth factors and cytokines.
European Patent Publication EP-A-0 922 758 discloses the production of mature dendritic cells from immature dendritic cells derived from pluripotential cells having the potential of expressing either macrophage or dendritic cell characteristics. The method requires contacting the immature dendritic cells with a dendritic cell maturation factor containing IFN-γ.
European Patent Publication EP-B-0 633930 teaches the production of human dendritic cells by first culturing human CD34+ hematopoietic cells (i) with GM-CSF, (ii) with TNF-α and IL-3, or (iii) with GM-CSF and TNF-α to induce the formation of CD1a+ hematopoietic cells.
Patent Publication No. 2004/0152191 discloses the maturation of dendritic cells by contacting them with RU 41740.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0146492 teaches a process for producing recombinant dendritic cells by transforming hematopoietic stem cells followed by differentiation of the stem cells into dendritic cells by culture in medium containing GM-CSF.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2004/0038398 discloses methods for the preparation of substantially purified populations of DCs and monocytes from the peripheral blood of mammals. Myeloid cells are isolated from the mammal and DCs are separated from this population to yield an isolated subpopulation of monocytes. DCs are then enriched by negative selection with anti-CD2 antibodies to remove T cells.
Although mature DCs are functionally competent and are therefore useful to induce antigen-specific T cells, not all mature DCs are optimized to induce these responses. It has been shown that some mature DCs may also stimulate T helper cells by secreting IL-12. Macatonia et al. (1995) Immunol. 154:507 1; Ahuja et al. (1998) Immunol. 161:868 and Unintford et al. (1999) Immunol. 97:588. IL-12 also has been shown to enhance antigen-specific CD8+ T cell response to antigen in an animal model. Schmidt et al. (1999) Immunol. 163:2561.
Mosca et al. (2000) Blood 96:3499, disclose that culture of DC in AIM V medium containing both soluble CD40L trimer and IFNγ 1b results in increased IL-12 expression in comparison to culture in medium containing only soluble CD40L trimer.
Koya et al. (2003) J. Immunother. 26(5):451 report that IL-12 expression can be enhanced by tranducing immature DCs, in the presence of IFNγ, with a lentiviral vector encoding CD40 Ligand. Greater than 90% of the CD40L transduced DCs expressed CD83 on their cell surface. Unfortunately, lentiviral transduced cells are not suitable for therapeutic purposes, and proviral integration into the genome of the transduced cell can result in leukemia. Furthermore, persistent expression of CD40L may have detrimental effects on APC function and viability.
This work supplemented the earlier work of Mackey, et al. (1998) J. Immunol. 161:2094 who reported that in vivo, DCs require maturation via CD40 to generate anti-tumor immunity. Similarly, Kuniyoshi, J. S. et al. (1999) Cell Immunol. 193:48 have shown that DCs treated with soluble trimeric CD40 Ligand plus IFN-γ stimulated potent T-cell proliferation and induced T cells with augmented antigen-specific lysis. Kalady, M. F. et al. (2004) J. Surg. Res. 116:24, reported that human monocyte derived DCs transfected with mRNA encoding melanoma antigen MART-1 or influenza M1 matrix protein exposed to different maturation stimuli added either simultaneously or sequentially showed variability in antigen presentation, IL-12 secretion and immunogenicity of effector T cells raised in the presence of these DCs. Most importantly, this study showed that the application of a ‘cytokine cocktail’ consisting of IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6 and PGE2, followed by extracellular soluble CD40L protein was superior to applying all the agents simultaneously. However, these authors did not study the combination of IFN-γ signaling with transient CD40L signalling in a sequential process. Moreover, despite the production of IL-12 when IFN-γ and CD40L are concomitantly added to the culture medium, the recent prior art shows that the resulting DCs are actually immunosuppressive, rather than pro-inflammatory (Hwu et al. (2000) J. Immunol. 164: 3596; Munn et al. (2002) 297:1867; and Grohmann et al. (2003) Trends Immunol. 24:242) due to the induction of an enzyme that metabolized tryptophan resulting in the starvation of responder T-cells that then fail to proliferate. Thus, current literature suggests that the combination of IFN-γ and CD40L should not increase immunopotency. The present invention addresses the long-felt need to provide improved methods for DC maturation and mature DCs with enhanced immunopotency.